Guantanamo Bay: Shadow prison?

We talk to a former prisoner and look at the allegations of torture.

The US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay provokes intense controversy and emotional responses whenever it is mentioned.

Human rights groups and former prisoners allege torture routinely takes place at the island prison.

But US officials have consistently maintained that detainees are treated humanely in accordance with international law.

The detention camp is a US military prison on the shores of Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Since the beginning of the war in Afghanistan more than 770 detainees have been held at the prison.

Approximately 420 have since been released. Those held at this prison are classified as "enemy combatants" by the US government.

Murat Kurnaz, a Turkish citizen living in Germany, was arrested in Pakistan soon after the attacks of September 11 and spent five years at Guantanamo.

He is the author of the newly published book Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantanamo.

Also on the show, Andy Worthington of Reprieve, an anti-death penalty group. He is the author of The Guantanamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison and in Washington DC we have Paul Glastris, the editor of The Washington Monthly Magazine whose current issue calls for Guantanamo to be shut down.